be
found out, by those most interested in the sale; but the grand
introduction of utility was at that period when the _Waverley_ novels
made their appearance. Then, instead of the exaggerated imaginings of
a diseased brain, with all its superhuman agency, we had History
beautifully blended with Fiction, or rather Truth, accurate
descriptions of nature, and correct pictures of life, both high and
low. We all remember what powerful sensations those literary wonders
at first created, and what a crowd of imitators followed in their
train. The Magazines soon caught up the tone, and became doubly
interesting, with the lives of private soldiers, "Two or Three Years
in the Peninsula," and the "Subaltern." The camp and the man-of-war
now poured forth their vast stories of anecdote and adventure, in all
shapes and sizes--octavo and article--sketches of character, local
customs and antiquities, filled up the other attractions of the day;
and to read for improvement, while we read for amusement, was almost
considered the fashionable employment of time.

These excellent topics, doubtless, had their season, and when done,
our wholesale dealers in wisdom, the Publishers, well knew that their
great patron, the public, would not be content with what had gone
before. Something was to be again produced, that would make the press
move; and that something, we believe, every one will agree with us,
that, notwithstanding the splendour of Genius which the imaginative
tribe are endowed with in this mental age, was to be that which was
_new_--that, in fact, which would _sell_. This, as might be expected,
caused the booksellers and their hacks to look around them, and the
tempting gilt which the former held out, (scanty though the quantity
always be!) was yet too keen a spur to the flagging wits of hungry
scribblers, to allow them to lie idle. Society was once more
ransacked, and that which formerly gave pleasure was now found to be
too old for entertainment. Bad practices were discovered to exist
amongst those with whom honesty was thought to dwell--the seat of
justice was found to be but the seat of corruption--and so high in
repute had Unions risen in the land, that they even extended to the
very pests of society--the men who lived by plunder. It is to this
desire for change, then, that we are indebted for those admirable
novels of the French writer Paul de Kock, which have lately appeared;
and wherein are portrayed, with such faithfulness,